In which I am a total nerd about Batman and heroes

"A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know the world hasn't ended."

I cried during The Dark Knight Rises.

I was a little late to the game, since I had only seen Batman Begins once years ago and had never watched The Dark Knight all the way through. So in the two weeks before The Dark Knight Rises was released, I saw the first two parts of the trilogy and loved them; and the third movie blew me away. I’m sure there will be any number of interpretations about the class warfare Bane exploits to create his dystopia and how that relates to the 99%, especially as Bruce Wayne/Batman’s identity as an underdog and a billionaire fluctuates throughout the film. But to me, the most salient aspect of the movie was the thread that runs through Nolan’s trilogy: what is a hero?

I found myself thinking about epic heroes (surprise!) and where Batman would fall on that spectrum. Unlike the heroes of the Iliad, Batman sacrifices a great deal for the people of Gotham (like Selina Kyle says, "Once you’ve done what you had to do, they’ll never let you do what you want to do"); but Batman receives nothing in return, unless you count all the cool toys he gets from Morgan Freeman. Particularly at the beginning of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman has more in common with Aeneas—he’s conflicted, internally focused, and struggling with private guilt more than public shame.

I can’t imagine that Christopher Nolan spends a lot of time thinking about ancient epic, because that would be too wonderful. But there’s no doubt that his exploration of heroism is central to Christian Bale’s Batman. Though unbelievably wealthy, Batman is just a guy. He’s not from another planet, like Thor or Superman. He doesn’t have any innate superpowers. He just chooses to behave heroically. And sometimes not so heroically. Remember in The Dark Knight when he hacked all the cell phones in Gotham so he could find the Joker? Effective, yes. But Bruce Wayne is still Big Brother in that part of the movie. In their video "Why Batman is Secretly Terrible for Gotham," Cracked.com asks, "Why don’t you just admit that Batman is a violent, maladjusted sociopath who is using his parents’ death as an excuse to work out his aggression?" While I wouldn’t go that far, I think the point here is that Bruce Wayne/Batman is a real guy. He makes questionable judgments. He oversteps boundaries. He’s relatable.

But the most attractive and heroic thing about Bruce Wayne is his commitment to his ideals. He decides that valuable things are worth fighting for, like law and order in Gotham. For those causes he becomes whatever he needs to be; and when his dreams don’t materialize, when the Joker breaks the man Wayne considered the best in Gotham, his vision is shattered and he withdraws from everything. I think one of the best lines in the film is Miranda Tate’s: "You have a practiced apathy, Mr. Wayne. But a man who doesn’t care doesn’t spend half his fortune on a plan to save the world. And isn’t so wounded when it fails that he goes into hiding." Nolan conveys Wayne’s brokenness effectively with a limp that miraculously disappears when he decides to get back in the game and fight for Gotham again. (Digression: I read a lot of reviews right after the movie came out, and many writers complained that Batman’s leg healing so quickly was unrealistic. Come on, people. It’s symbolic. Read a damn book.)

Bruce Wayne, like John Blake, turns his rage, sorrow and pain into a drive and a commitment powerful enough to effect change. There is a lot of ugliness and evil in the world, and according to the League of Shadows, places and people who seem hopelessly damaged should be destroyed. At his core, Batman is someone who believes battered and fragmented things are still worth saving. Sam sums this attitude up in The Two Towers when he says, "There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."

In other words, people like Batman because he fights for an idea that we would all like to believe and often struggle to remember. Yes, there is a plenty of ugliness and devastation in the world. But that ugliness also presents a thousand opportunities for restoration.